“Didn’t you hear him crying?” he says, rushing to cradle their infant. His wife stares at their child as if it is a thing, a disgusting, puking, siren-wailing thing. Mother is a word that once bloomed in her stomach but came out like rotting like afterbirth. This is not her child, at least, it doesn’t feel like it was. How could this squealing, fleshy pink thing be a part of her?
The father of the child and her husband cradles the screaming child and scolds her over his bellows. “Pick him up when he cries!” The baby’s cries pause only so he can vomit on the man’s satin lapel. He lips twist in repugnance. “Great, now I have to change. Are you happy now? I’ll be late to work. You know, Mom says all you do is sit around. You might want to actually lift a finger while I work day and night so we can afford this extravagant life.” He places the still-crying infant into her reluctant arms. “Mom will be downstairs in a second to help you with Junior. In the meantime, could you just hold him? That’s all that I ask.” He leaves before she can even answer his simple demand. He’s right. Surely, she could do something so simple.
She stares at this baby, this foreign thing she is supposed to feel an instant magnetic attachment to. Instead, she feels nothing. A melancholic numbness has her submerged. She cries for the second time that morning. She has cried almost as much as her four-month-year-old. In the time since her son’s birth, she has become a pale, weeping skeleton, hardly eating, hardly sleeping. Some nights, after Junior had actually gone to bed, she would walk over to the bassinet and examine the infant, trying to will herself to love and adore this squirming worm. When she couldn’t, she would go downstairs, lock herself in the bathroom, and sob. The guilt tastes like salt.
She tries to nurse her baby, but the bottle-feed child turns away. She cries harder. Her husband hasn’t touched her since she got pregnant, and now her own child doesn’t love her either. They could both sense what a failure she is.
At the sound of their collective sobs, her mother-in-law comes waddling over. “Oh, sweetie, still having the baby blues?” She plucks the child off of his mother. Immediately, his cries cease. The mother’s sobs do not.
“I’ll be in my room,” the mother chokes out.
“Okay, honey, you just rest up. Gran-Gran’s got this.” She turns to the placated child. “Don’t we, sugarbuns?” she coos at Junior, who coos back. His previous woe is completely forgotten. “Alright, bugaboo, let’s get some breakfast. I bet you’re a hungry little boy.” They disappear into the kitchen, and the mother returns to her bedroom.
Her husband is still changing. He gives her only a sneer as she curls back into her bed. She does not sleep, but instead spends hours thinking about how much better her family would be if she wasn’t a part of it.
